Mereuch, Cambodia: Researchers will monitor Cambodia’s remaining tigers using almost 200 camera traps and two specially trained dogs – capable of tracking the tigers over 150 square kilometers by following the animal’s droppings.
The camera traps and dogs ultimately will help conservationists to better protect tigers in the Mondulkiri Protected Forest in Eastern Cambodia, one of Southeast Asia’s largest remaining tropical dry forests.
WWF has set up more than 165 camera traps in the area, and in a few months two US-trained dogs, will begin scouring the undergrowth and sniffing for tiger scent.
The two dogs will be re-trained to locate the scat of tiger and other carnivores. Using dogs to sniff out the scats from large carnivores has been widely used in other parts of the world with great success, such as tiger monitoring projects in the Russian Far East.
“We know tigers are there. With more concentrated monitoring we have a better chance of spotting them – and this will enable us to put more protective measures in play,” said Nicholas Cox, WWF’s Dry Forests Ecoregion Leader.
Despite many years of poaching, there now are signs that the dry forest is recovering as a habitat for tigers. Leopards now are relatively common and other wildlife returning to the area include wild banteng, Asian jackal, Eld’s deer and primates such as silvered langur. In addition Vultures, Great Hornbills and Giant Ibis have now been frequently spotted in the forest.
The tiger population is estimated to be between 10 and 25 animals in the Eastern Plains Landscape. Camera traps have been used in some parts of the Protected Forest previously, but they will now be concentrated to a core area frequented by tigers. A tiger was last photographed in the area in 2007, and scats (droppings) have been found more recently in the area.
“It’s now or never, we must act if the trend of increasing tiger prey species is to be made permanent,” said Seng Teak, WWF Cambodia Country Director. “Stronger protection measures and a rigorous management plan are being implemented by the local government in Mondulkiri and WWF. When prey returns to the area the tiger population will have a chance to bounce back in a few years”, says.
WWF has been involved in conservation work in the Eastern Plains since early 2001. That commitment was increased a few years ago to cover an area spanning more than 20,000 square kilometers.
Strict protection measures have been enforced in the Mondulkiri Protected Forest and the Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuary. In core protection zones, villagers are not allowed to hunt or cut timber, and
more than 70 trained rangers patrol the protected areas.
Lean Kha, a 48-year-old ranger working for WWF, was a poacher in the 70s.
“As a 13-year-old boy I was forced by the Khmer Rouge to go into the forest and kill wild animals,” Kha said. “I quickly learned to shoot and lay snares. During a period of 5-6 years I shot 16 elephants, 14 leopards and two tigers. At the time, I was ignorant and did not think of the consequences when I shot those tigers.”
“Today I’m really proud to work for WWF, and to use my skills to combat wildlife crime so that there will still be tigers and other wildlife in the forest when my children grow up,” he said.
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Saturday, June 13, 2009
US dogs to sniff out Cambodian tigers
US: Laos, Cambodia out of trade blacklist
WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama on Friday removed Laos and Cambodia from a blacklist, opening the way for US loans to companies doing business in the former US adversaries.
In brief declarations, Obama said Cambodia and Laos had each "ceased to be a Marxist-Leninist country," a designation that prevents financial support by the US Export-Import Bank.
The move, which still must go through formalities, means that US businesses would be eligible for US government-backed loans and credit guarantees as they can receive when operating in most countries.
"Given the commitment of Cambodia and Laos to open markets, the president has determined that this designation is no longer applicable," an Obama administration official said.
But the decision to boost trade ties with Laos came under criticism from campaigners for the Hmong minority, a hill people who supported US forces during the Vietnam War and recount retaliatory abuse decades later.
A recent report by Paris-based Medicins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said Hmong who fled since 2005 to Thailand have said they suffered killings, gang-rape and malnutrition at the hands of Laotian forces.
Obama's declaration "is completely shocking and outrageous," said Philip Smith, executive director of the Center for Public Policy Analysis, which promotes Hmong rights.
"This is a one-party regime which is closely allied with Burma [Myanmar] and North Korea," he said. "This will embolden the Laos government to continue to slaughter and massacre civilians."
Many Hmong are still in hiding in Laos. Another 250,000 Hmong have resettled in the United States.
The United States established normal trade relations with Laos in 2004, part of an effort under then president George W. Bush to reconcile after years of friction.
US relations with Cambodia have been marred by US concerns over accounting for Khmer Rouge war crimes along with corruption. Washington lifted all remaining restrictions on assistance to Cambodia in 2007.
The United States still forbids US-backed loans to businesses to operate in six countries –Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria.
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Friday, June 12, 2009
Tim Sakhorn confident on asylum bid
Written by Holly Pham and Neth Pheaktra
AS the June 18 deadline for his asylum application draws near, Buddhist monk and human rights activist Tim Sakhorn says he is confident the United States government will grant him political asylum and allow him to settle in America.
Tim Sakhorn, an advocate for the rights of southern Vietnam's ethnic Khmer minority, popularly known as Khmer Krom, fled from Cambodia in
April and has been living at an undisclosed location in Bangkok awaiting the US government's decision, expected next week.
"I am now waiting for an official confirmation from [the UN High Commissioner for Refugees]," Tim Sakhorn said by phone from Bangkok, adding that he is going to have a meeting with officials from the US Embassy in Bangkok soon.
"I strongly believe that I deserve asylum status since the threats from the Vietnamese authorities are real."
The 41-year-old monk, who was arrested and defrocked in Cambodia in June 2007 before being deported and jailed for a year in Vietnam on charges of undermining its national unity, fled to Thailand when Vietnamese authorities allowed him to enter Cambodia on April 4 to visit
family in his native Takeo province.
"It is difficult for Khmer Krom to stay in this country: The Thai authorities will arrest as soon as they find us," Tim Sakhorn said.
"It is a bit easier for monks since they can rely on pagodas for day-to-day support, but regular Khmer Krom have a hard time even finding shelter or paying for food. Khmer Krom will face serious problems if the UN fails to recognise our rights to refuge," Tim Sakhorn said.
The Bangkok office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has granted temporary refugee status to five Khmer Krom monks, allowing them to stay in Thailand pending the approval of an asylum bid to other countries.
Ang Chanrith, executive director of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Human Rights Organisation, said the UNHCR is expected to release the official verdict on Tim Sakhorn's case on Thursday, while the refugee status of the other five Khmer monks will be finalised by early July.
He said Thailand is now a temporary home for more than 200 Khmer Krom currently applying for residence in third countries.
Since early 2009, the UNHCR has helped four Khmer Krom refugees obtain political asylum in the United States, while an additional 71 have received temporary refugee status and are waiting to move on to another country.
Worsening situation
Thach Setha, president of Khmer Kampuchea Krom Association, said the rapid increase in the number of Khmer Krom refugees in Thailand was due to the series of protests against rights abuses committed by the Vietnamese authorities in 2007 and 2008.
"Even after having fled to Cambodia, [the Khmer Krom] are not safe. The Vietnamese authorities continue to track them down here. This is why they must seek asylum in another country," he said.
In a report on the Khmer Krom issued in January, Human Rights Watch recorded the "severe and often shrouded" methods used by the Vietnamese government to stifle freedom of religion and other basic rights of the Khmer minority in the Mekong Delta.
The US Embassy in Bangkok could not be reached for comment Thursday.
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Crisis poses added hurdles to elimination of child labour
Written by khouth Sophak Chakrya As a garment worker, Ou Kunthear would regularly send US$30 back to her family in Kampong Speu province. Since losing her factory job, she can no longer send remittances, leaving her parents too poor to pay for food.
In response, her parents have taken her younger siblings - all under the age of 15 - out of school and forced them to work washing clothes and making charcoal.
"I pity my younger siblings, because they should be learning. They should not be working over charcoal stoves or washing stations," she said.
The eighth World Day Against Child Labour, observed today, marks the 10th anniversary of the adoption of an International Labour Organisation convention stressing the need to end the worst forms of child labour.
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As the global economic crisis has hit Cambodia, however, pressure has mounted on families to pull their children out of school and push them into the workforce, experts said.
According to a statement released Thursday, ChildFund Australia estimated that 40 percent of all children aged between 7 and 17 years are currently engaged in some form of child labour.
But the ILO has said that efforts from the government and donors could help transform the crisis into a catalyst for the elimination of the worst forms of child labour in Cambodia.
"The economic downturn is one of the most unexpected, hardest challenges impacting child labour. But the downturn - even though it's a threat - can be turned into an opportunity," said Joseph Menacherry, the chief technical adviser at the ILO's International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour.
When the construction sector was growing rapidly, there was a sharp increase in demand for child labour, Menacherry said. As the boom goes bust, there are fewer jobs available to children, he said.
"This gives us an opportunity to be able to put into place sufficient awareness, sufficient sensitivity and sufficient mechanisms for monitoring and enforcement, so that once the economy starts to go up, we will be able to ensure that children do not go back to this hazardous construction sector," he said.
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I PITY MY YOUNGER SIBLINGS ... THEY SHOULD NOT BE WORKING OVER CHARCOAL STOVES.
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Menacherry said that eliminating child labour during an economic crisis has the added benefit of opening up jobs for adults, allowing more families to preserve their incomes and keep their children in school.
"Why are we sending children to work when there is an economic crisis? When there is an economic crisis we should be pulling children out of work and making sure adults go there," he said.
At the moment, however, the crisis is forcing more children into the worst forms of child labour, said Haidy Ear-Dupuy, advocacy and communications manager for World Vision Cambodia.
"Many workers have lost their jobs and seen their income drop," Ear-Dupuy said, adding that this has led many parents to force their children to find jobs.
Menacherry said the number of children working in hard labour conditions in Cambodia had grown from an estimated 250,000 in 2002 to about 300,000 this year.
Promoting economic growth
Child labour is one of the major hurdles Cambodia must clear if it is to achieve sustained economic growth in the future, said Bill Salter, director of the ILO's sub-regional office for Southeast Asia.
"Child labour has to be tackled in Cambodia - not only as a social issue, but also as an issue of human resource development that can help the economic growth of the country," he said.
The ILO, with the help of the World Bank and UNICEF, is finalising estimates of how much funding would be necessary to eliminate the worst forms of child labour in Cambodia.
Menacherry said the task would cost "not more than US$100 million", adding that he viewed the figure as "modest".
Even though child labour has increased over the last seven years, Menacherry said, the ILO's goal to end the worst forms of child labour in Cambodia by 2016 was "extremely realistic" if sufficient resources were made available.
In work, out of school
Knut Harald Ulland, country director for Save the Children, said the economic crisis could cause more teachers to begin collecting informal fees, which would make more families unable to send their children to school.
"Because teachers have felt the impact of the crisis, school fees may have increased" already, he said, calling informal school fees the biggest obstacle to education in Cambodia.
"As long as teachers don't have a living salary, it's difficult to crack down on," he added.
Four years ago, informal fees drove Ran Rin, 12, out of the classroom and into a salt-production job in Kampot province. He told the Post this week that he left school because his family could not afford the fees charged by his teachers.
"Poverty was the obstacle for my studies.... If teachers do not demand money from their students, then children of poor families like me would not have to drop out," he said.
7 ancient treasures returned to Cambodia
Statues from 12th century Angkorian era include heads of Hindu god Shiva
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, second right, and Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, left, stand by a piece from Cambodian artifacts of the Angkorian era during a ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
The statues from the 12th century Angkorian era, including six heads of the Hindu god Shiva, were handed to Cambodian officials during an official one-day visit by Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. Thai authorities seized them from smugglers in 1999.
Widespread looting of Cambodia's ancient temples has occurred in recent decades, with many items smuggled into Thailand for sale on the international antiques markets or to private collectors.
Plane hitch delays Thai PM's return from Cambodia
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – The return of Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva from a one-day official trip to Cambodia was delayed Friday by problems with his plane.
The chief of police at Phnom Penh's international airport, Chay Bunna, said late Friday night that that a new plane was being sent from Thailand to pick up the prime minister and his delegation, after their 9:20 p.m. departure was delayed.
"The technicians at the airport said that his plane has a very minor technical problem, so we insisted that he delay his flight schedule," said Cambodian Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong.
Chay Bunna identified the aircraft, on which repairs were being made, as an Embraer 145. He said that Abhisit's party first waited at the airport for the aircraft to be fixed, but drove back to the city to wait further after it was decided to fly in a replacement plane.
It was not immediately known when the new flight would depart.
Abhisit met with Prime Minister Hun Sen and King Norodom Sihamoni during his visit, his first to the neighboring country since he became prime minister in December. He also held talks with Thai businessmen and visited a hospital.
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Malaria is more deadly than swine flu
Perhaps the alarm caused over swine flu will help us empathise with the victims of other diseases that are killing millions
It is no mean feat to knock Ronaldo off the front pages, especially when the self-regarding Portuguese footballer has just broken the club record for a transfer fee. But yesterday the World Health Organisation's Margaret Chan achieved just that by declaring the first influenza pandemic in 40 years.
Never mind that to date H1N1 swine flu has killed just 144 people worldwide. With 1,300 cases now being reported in Australia, and simultaneous community outbreaks in Chile, Japan and the United States, Chan said scientists had concluded that transmission was "unstoppable" – hence the decision to declare a maximum pandemic alert at level six.
The subtext of Chan's message was that this was no time for complacency: with the winter flu season in Australia now well underway, hospital admissions in Melbourne have quadrupled in recent weeks. If the virus maintains its present level of virulence then experts are predicting that a third of the British population could be infected this autumn and as many as 36,000 could die – about three times as many as in a normal flu season.
But "could" is not the same as "will", and looking round the world you will find many more mortal and, arguably, more present threats to global health. Take HIV/Aids, for instance, a disease that has been pandemic, or at least has been spreading at epidemic levels in Africa, for 30 years. In 2007, the latest year for which figures are available, Aids-related illness killed 2 million people worldwide, including 270,000 children. But because two-thirds of the 33 million people annually infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa and the remainder belong, by and large, to discrete "high-risk" groups such as intravenous drug users, HIV no longer blips on our radar screens.
Or take malaria. I have just returned from western Cambodia, where scientists are now reporting the first signs of parasite resistance to the world's current frontline anti-malarial, artemisinin. Malaria, along with diarrhoeal diseases and pneumonia, is one of the leading causes of infant mortality in Cambodia. And in Uganda and other high malaria transmission countries in Africa, it is also a major killer of pregnant women (the WHO estimates that some 3,000 people a day die from malaria in sub-Saharan Africa every day, the majority of them women and children).
Unlike influenza, as yet we have no vaccine against malaria. Indeed, artemisinin is currently the best, and in some parts of the world, the only effective treatment against the deadliest strains of the parasitical disease. In other words, if resistance to artemisinin spreads worldwide – as occurred with choloroquine in the 1960s – then we have nothing else in the locker. This may not matter to you now: but it could well matter to you if you travel to Kenya and the prophylactic your GP has prescribed fails, or if your child is hospitalized with falciparum malaria during his or her gap-year travels.
Yet as with HIV, malaria strains our empathy. "When one has fought a war, one hardly knows what a dead person is," wrote Albert Camus in The Plague. "And if a dead man has no significance unless one has seen him dead, a hundred million bodies spread through history are just a mist drifting through the imagination."
Or as a taxi driver in York put it en route to York University's biology department – where scientists are currently breeding high-yielding strains of Artemisia Annua, the plant from which artemisinin is derived, to produce sufficient quantities of the drug for Cambodia – "Unless it affects someone in my family, why should I care?"
H1N1 of course could affect that taxi driver's family and the families of millions of Britons like him. Unlike seasonal strains of influenza, which are usually only dangerous to infants and the over-65s, H1N1 swine flu – like the 1918 H1N1 "Spanish" influenza virus – appears to be hitting the under-25s hardest, hence the importance of WHO's declaration yesterday and the stepping-up of vaccine production before the autumn (at present, experts predict there will only be enough vaccine to inoculate half the British population).
Yet, for all the concern about an influenza pandemic, we should keep in mind that WHO's announcement was first and foremost an exercise in risk assessment: a signal to governments who have yet to activate their pandemic plans to pull their fingers out. Its use of the term is also the reflection of changing definitions. In the past, WHO defined an influenza pandemic as causing "enormous numbers of deaths and illness". By contrast, the current definition requires only "community-level outbreaks" in two continents at the same time – a test that was actually met several weeks ago.
That WHO has delayed announcing the inevitable until now is an indication of how worried United Nations member states have become of fuelling panic at a time when the world economy is just beginning to shown faltering signs of recovery from the credit crunch. But while Chan recognised there was a danger of people overreacting, she argued that the greater danger was "complacency". She also warned that while a level six pandemic alert did not mean the virus was becoming more dangerous or that we should expect to see an increase in mortality in developed nations, there was no telling how H1N1 would behave "under conditions typically found in the developing world".
If panicking about an influenza pandemic can help us empathise with the plight of the invisible victims of infectious diseases and make those global health connections, so much the better. Like the HIV virus and drug-resistant malaria parasites, H1N1 is no respecter of borders. And whether we drive a taxi in York or live in a mud hut in Yemen, we can be bitten at any time.
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Thursday, June 11, 2009
Opposition Leader Warns of Catastrophe
By Sok Kemara, VOA Khmer
Cambodia’s two opposition leaders are in the US together for the first time, and one of them warns that Cambodia is facing a catastrophe.
Sam Rainsy, leader of his self-named party, and Kem Sokha, head of the Human Rights Party, are in the US together seeking political support.
Speaking at a National Democratic Institute conference in Washington Wednesday, Sam Rainsy said the economic crisis was hitting Cambodia hard. “I can tell you that the situation is catastrophic,” he said. “If the economic crisis lasts, let’s say, one year, two years, then we will have serious problems.”
Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government will not be able to address the economic problems, he said, “so this will bring the regime to a very critical stage.”
Echoing Sam Rainsy’s concerns, Kem Sokha said Cambodia needs to unite its democracy advocates and its messages to help people stand up for their rights, something that would not be possible without help from the international community.
The NDI meeting was attended by Cambodian-Americans, US non-governmental agencies and other institutions. Both leaders were looking for greater support from the US and other countries, and said they worry about the future of Cambodia.
They criticized donors for turning a blind eye to Cambodia’s problems with the economy, human rights, corruption and poverty.
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Taiwanese Companies Seek Cambodian Partners
By Pich Samnang
Twenty-five Taiwanese companies meet with government officials Thursday, to discuss increased investment in the face of Cambodia’s one-China policy.
Taiwan has no diplomatic relations with Cambodia, but officials say they welcome its investors.
Dim-Han Chen, managing director of Shie-Dim Machinery Co., Ltd., a machine manufacturer, told VOA Khmer at Thursday’s Taiwanese Trade Forum in Phnom Penh that his company was eyeing the Cambodian market because of its potential in the textile sector.
“There’s been so many garment factories,” he said. “That’s why I’m here, wanting to find a chance and wanting to find a market here because there is no fabric factory here.”
“We want to see the investment environment and see how to run a business here,” said Horace Huang, vice general manager for Taiwan Modern Dyestuffs and Pigments Co., Ltd.
The arrival of the Taiwanese business representatives follows increasingly better relations between mainland China and Taiwan. Taiwan has in the past sought independence from China, which considers it a rogue province.
Cambodia has declared its support for a “one-China” policy and has not allowed a Taiwanese embassy or representative since the closure of its office in July 1997, shortly after the coup.
However, Prime Minister Hun Sen has been quick to accept Taiwanese investment.
Keo Nimet, international relations manager at the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, who is working to attract more Taiwanese investors, said at the forum that statistics on Taiwanese investment in the kingdom is not reliably available, due to the lack of official Taiwanese representation.
He added, however, that if Cambodia can get more Taiwanese investors, the value could reach as much as neighboring countries like Vietnam, which sees $20 billion in Taiwanese investment.
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Khmer Krom Groups To Gather in Paris
By Men Kimseng
Worldwide members of the Khmer ethnic group from southern Vietnam will meet in Paris on Saturday to mark the loss of territory from Cambodia to Vietnam in the colonial period and push for greater freedoms under Vietnamese authorities.
Maggie Murphy, project coordinator for the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization and one of the organizers for the weekend conference, said that 60 years after Khmers lost the land, they are now living in poor conditions, with few rights.
“There is a lot of oppression,” she told VOA Khmer from her group’s office in the Hague. “There is a lack of ability to express one’s religious freedom, and the socio-economic situation of the Khmer Krom is not what it should be. It is far below that of the ethnic Vietnamese.”
Participants of Saturday’s conference will include French authorities, the secretary-general of Murphy’s organization and an Italian member of the European Parliament.
Kampuchea Krom was awarded by the French to Vietnam on June 4, 1949, when the countries were part of Indochina, a partitioning that nettles many Cambodians today and is a focal point for nationalistic rhetoric.
Millions of Khmer Krom now live without freedom of expression or religion, according to the US-based Khmer Kampuchea Krom Federation.
Vietnamese authorities impose restrictions on all forms of protest. Recently, they arrested a Khmer monk for hostile acts against good relations between Cambodia and Vietnam.
“In the future, the main purpose of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Federation is to properly prepare legal work to demand more [work against] human rights violations by the Vietnamese authorities,” Thach Ngoc Thach, president of the federation, told VOA Khmer by phone. “Our purpose is to move toward in what we call a journey toward self determination.”
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UN-backed trans-Asian rail agreement goes into effect
11 June 2009 – A railroad agreement aimed at linking 28 countries in Asia and Europe went into effect today, the United Nations announced in Bangkok.
The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) said the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Trans-Asian Railway Network became operative 90 days after China became the eighth country to have ratified it. The other parties to the agreement – developed with UN assistance – are Cambodia, India, Mongolia, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Tajikistan and Thailand.
The network comprises 114,000 kilometres of rail routes linking 28 countries in the region. The aim is to offer efficient rail transport services for the movement of goods and passengers within the region and between Asia and Europe, ESCAP said.
The network will also provide improved access for landlocked countries to major ports, ESCAP said.
Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Secretary of ESCAP, told an inaugural ceremony in ESCAP’s Bangkok headquarters, “Modern economies cannot generate long-term growth and employment without highly efficient transport networks that are developed with a high level of integration.
“The timing of this agreement is particularly significant as leaders from our region promote intra-regional trade to stimulate recovery from the economic crisis. It will provide a more cost effective way of doing business and ensure the benefits of trade are more evenly distributed across the region,” Ms. Heyzer said.
“Countries worldwide are now realizing that rising demand for transport services can no longer be met by roads alone,” said Ms. Heyzer. “The recent fluctuation in the oil price, growing concern over energy-dependency and the environmental impact of the transport industry are pushing policy-makers to promote more environmentally-friendly and sustainable rail transport solutions.”
The sex industry in Cambodia
The traffic police
’Tis a pity, but she won’t go away
IN EERIE, deserted silence on the outskirts of Phnom Penh sits the Prey Speu detention centre. Barely legible on its grimy walls a few weeks ago were cries for help and whispers of despair from the tormented souls once crammed into its grimy cells. “This is to mark that I lived in terror under oppression,” read one message.
It recalls a Khmer Rouge torture centre from the genocidal 1970s. But in fact the building was used just last year as a “rehabilitation” centre, where detained sex-workers, along with beggars and the homeless, learnt sewing and cooking. They were rounded up in a crackdown on trafficking for the sex industry. At first an attempt to clean up Phnom Penh, it soon escalated into a violent campaign by the police against prostitutes and those living on the street. According to Licadho, a local human-rights group, guards at the centre beat three people to death, and at least five detainees killed themselves. Sreymoa, a trafficked sex-worker, detained in May 2008 with her four-year-old daughter, recalls daily beatings, rapes and one death.
Partly to allay the previous American administration’s concerns about trafficking, Cambodia in February 2008 outlawed prostitution. Three months later the State Department took Cambodia off its annual “watch-list” of human-trafficking countries. But the police read the law as entitling them to lock up all sex-workers, not help victims of trafficking.
Reports of abuses soon surfaced, at first denied by the government. But in August it halted the raids as the United Nations and NGOs expressed mounting concern. One worry was that they would endanger HIV/AIDS-prevention programmes. The prevalence of HIV in Cambodia had fallen to 0.8% of the population since the government adopted a campaign in 2001 for “100% condom” use. Now, however, fearing the brothels where they worked would be raided, many sex-workers had started plying their trade on the streets or in karaoke bars, where health-care workers could not find them to distribute condoms.
Tony Lisle, of the UN’s AIDS organisation, says that since the raids stopped, HIV-prevention efforts have resumed with more success. Sex-workers in bars as well as brothels are to be covered, and the police to be encouraged to teach sex-workers about condom use. But those campaigning for sex-workers’ rights have objected, fearing that this might give the police a pretext to renew the raids. Jason Barber of Licadho says that for years the government has stopped arbitrary detentions when a fuss has been made, only to restart them as soon as attention has shifted.
Indeed, just before a regional summit in Phnom Penh in late May, the police again herded up beggars, sex-workers and drug-users, and sent them back to Prey Speu, newly reopened (with the graffiti painted over). Detaining sex-workers is much easier than arresting the traffickers. But the global slowdown is adding to the ranks of the unemployed. The World Bank forecasts that 200,000 Cambodians will fall below the poverty line this year. Many will fall into prostitution or beggary, whatever the law says and high-minded donors hope.
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009
ASIA: Land grabs threaten food security
It is going to be a big disaster of food in the history happening to the poors in Cambodia due to land robberies and violence that had been robbed livelihoods by the riches and government Elites, and now this their lives are going back to live in Pol Pot regime again.
PHNOM PENH, 10 June 2009 (IRIN) - Sam Pov, a rice farmer in Cambodia’s western Battambang Province, is very worried that his land will be taken over by a foreign investor.Land grabbing in Asia
CAMBODIA: Land being leased by Kuwait for rice (in negotiations) 100,000ha rubber plantation secured by VietnamLAOS: 100,000ha rubber plantation secured by Vietnam
PHILIPPINES: 10,000ha for agro-fishery secured by Bahrain 100,000ha for Qatar 1.24 million hectares for an unknown company in China (on hold)
INDONESIA: 500,000ha, a $4.3 billion rice investment, secured by Bin Laden Group of Saudi Arabia (on hold)
CHINA: 10 poultry farms worth $300 million and pig farms for $250-300 million purchased by Goldman Sachs of USA
Source: International Food Policy Research Institute
"I've heard the rumours about [Kuwait and Qatar]. I heard they might get our land because they need food," he said.
"The commune leaders haven't talked to us yet, and I don't think they will if the time comes. This is a good time for them to get paid and get huge benefits."
Last year, delegations from oil-rich Kuwait and Qatar visited the impoverished nation, eyeing leases on land to export food back home - a move that could leave many Cambodians without enough food, say activists and NGOs.
Kuwait has reportedly offered US$546 million to the Southeast Asian nation in loans for dams and roads, while Qatar will invest $200 million in agriculture.
And while the government has not yet announced what the Gulf States will get in return, they have publicly expressed interest in the country’s farmland.
"Cambodia has plenty of farmland and forests but has been suffering from land grabbing by the government as well as influential people for years," Jin Ju, a food rights activist at the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) , told IRIN from Hong Kong.
"I doubt that [either] government would consider the villagers and farmers as equal decision-makers," she said.
Evictions
Forced evictions, mostly to build hotels and high-end apartments, have been a problem in Cambodia since the UN peacekeeping force left in 1993.
Adhoc, the Cambodian human rights watchdog, estimates 50,000 people were evicted to make way for development projects in 2006 and 2007 alone.
The problem arose because most land documents were destroyed under the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979, making it unclear who owns what.
Yet the practice in Cambodia of leasing land to Gulf States for farming - and the rate at which the land is being siphoned off - is new, say food rights groups.
"The governments [Kuwait and Cambodia] should select appropriate land through discussion with the villagers, and combine the traditional farming in Cambodia and new technology for farming," Ju added.
Food insecurity
The problem of land grabbing by foreign investors and governments, however, extends well beyond the confines of Cambodia.
Elsewhere in Asia similar examples can be seen, as well as in Africa. According to the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), between 15 and 20 million hectares of farmland in such countries have been subject to transactions or negotiations since 2006.
IFPRI estimates the value of such deals at up to $30 billion.
Ever since high food prices in 2007 and 2008 raised the prospect of food insecurity for countries without much farmland, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have scoured Asia for land.
China, which has to feed more than one billion people, is also looking to Southeast Asia to sustain its breakneck growth.
"Not only will it displace small farmers as such investments have done in Indonesia," said Amitava Mukherjee, head of the UN Asian and Pacific Centre for Agricultural Engineering and Machinery in Beijing, "but it will also have serious environmental consequences … [and] given that UAE and Kuwait are leasing land, not buying it, [they] would have no interest in long-term development of the farmland they are seeking access to".
He added that the comments were his own and did not reflect the views of the UN.
In Kamukhaan village in the Philippines, such effects have become well documented, according to the AHRC.
Since a Filipino company took over 613ha in the village to build a banana plantation in 1981 - to supply US-based fruit company Dole - hundreds of villagers have suffered skin and respiratory ailments from pesticide use, the group claims.
"The farmers had lost their farmland, their children, their natural sources, their health and their future," Ju said.
"Now the Philippines' food sovereignty is absent and the self-sufficiency is almost zero," she claimed.
In the Philippines this year, Bahrain secured 10,000ha for agro-fishery, Qatar leased 100,000ha, and an unknown company from China leased 1.24 million hectares, though the deal has been put on hold, according to an April policy briefing by IFPRI.
Such deals are often done in secret, it says, stopping civil society groups from overseeing the terms and defending the rights of local farmers.
In Myanmar, Chinese companies have driven farmers off their land to cultivate an oil plant, according to Welt Hunger Hilfe, a German NGO.
The farmers already faced seasonal changes that threatened food security, but had their last source of food taken from them by the government, the group says. Read more!
Company Seeks To Expand Money Transfer by Phone
By Ros Sothear
As soon as you hear the beeping alert, money has been transferred to your account. That’s because Wing, the first instant transaction service in Cambodia, is up and running.
Wing started in November 2008 and now has around 16,000 customers, mostly students and garment factory workers. The service has been limited because only one moble phone service, Hello, can undertake money transfers.
Cambodia has about 4 million mobile phone users, and Wing is in talks with other companies to extend its coverage.
The Wing service acts like a traditional bank account, but money can be sent via cell phone at a cheaper cost, Wing’s managing director, Brad Jones, told VOA Khmer.
wing allows users to send up to 4 million riel, around $1,000, through mobile phones, with a service charge of one-quarter of a percent.
“The benefit is to reduce a community’s vulnerability,” Jones said. “The end result is a community that becomes a Wing customer that is at much less risk of losing its money and has the ability to send money at a much cheaper cost.”
In Cambodia, money transfers have become necessary among migrant laborers who frequently send money to support their families in rural areas. Very few of them use formal banking services, preferring instead to send money through taxi drivers, friends or relatives, means with high costs and no guarantees.
“It will strengthen the financial system and help economic growth,” Om Seng Bora, head of VisionFund, a microfinance institution partnering with Wing.
Mobile transfer service has operated in many countries in the world and it has become very popular in Philippine, India and Kenya, he said.
“It is amazing,” said Thor Sophorn, an agent at a Wing transfer shop in central Phnom Penh. “It is modern and very easy. We can send money in a minute.”
Wing does face a perception among potential customers that money can be lost in the process, but Jones said the system was based on modern technology and was very secure.
Read more!
KRouge defence documents not stolen: court spokesman
By Patrick Falby
PHNOM PENH (AFP) — An investigation at Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court has concluded there was no theft of documents from a Khmer Rouge leader's defence team, a tribunal spokesman said Wednesday.
Last week Michiel Pestman, the Dutch defence lawyer for regime ideologue Nuon Chea, said he suspected confidential papers had been stolen from his office after he found them floating among waterlilies in a pond at the court.
But court spokesman Lars Olsen said a tribunal security report had concluded there was no theft in the incident that some local media dubbed "Waterlilygate".
"The main conclusions are clear: there is no evidence to substantiate allegations of foul play or theft of documents," Olsen told reporters at a press briefing.
Olsen said that details of exactly how the documents ended up in the pond would be revealed in the report.
The confidential documents were drafts of a defence letter to the recently appointed head of the court's victims unit, Helen Jarvis, raising concerns about her membership of Australia's Leninist Party Faction (LPF).
Jarvis signed a 2006 LPF statement which proclaimed: "Against the bourgeoisie and their state agencies we don't respect their laws and their fake moral principles."
The defence has said Jarvis's statement indicated she might not respect the rules of the Khmer Rouge court, however tribunal spokesman Olsen said the administration respected her right to have personal views.
"Dr. Jarvis's political affiliations were well known prior to her being made head of the victims' unit," Olsen said.
The troubled tribunal, which is currently trying former Khmer Rouge prison chief Duch, also faces accusations of political interference by the government and claims that Cambodian staff were forced to pay kickbacks for their jobs.
Duch has stated that he took orders to kill and torture from Nuon Chea, who is commonly referred to as the Khmer Rouge "Brother Number Two."
In Wednesday's testimony, Duch spoke about how Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot "cleverly" sought to dismantle the national religion of Buddhism by assassinating abbots and ordering monks to disrobe.
"Pol Pot opposed all religions as a general principle... (But) they never sent anyone to (my) office because of their belief in religion," Duch said.
Pol Pot, the so-called "Brother Number One", died in 1998 before facing justice, and fears over the health of ageing suspects hang over the court.
Others in detention awaiting trial besides Nuon Chea are former head of state Khieu Samphan, foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife and minister of social affairs Ieng Thirith.
The long-awaited first trial has heard Duch, real name Kaing Guek Eav, acknowledge responsibility and beg forgiveness for overseeing the torture and execution of more than 15,000 people at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison.
Up to two million people died of starvation, overwork, torture or execution as the 1975 to 1979 Khmer Rouge regime emptied cities and enslaved the population on collective farms in its bid to create a communist utopia.
Read more!
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
-21 babies 'smashed', Duch says
Written by Cheang Sokha and Georgia Wilkins
Duch acknowledges infants battered against tree trunks
FORMER Khmer Rouge jailer Kaing Guek Eav told Cambodia's war crimes court Monday that babies were slain under his supervision by being held by their legs and smashed against trees, as gruesomely depicted in paintings of the act on display at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum that now exists at the prison site.
"The horrendous images of those [babies] smashed against trees, yes, that was done by my subordinates," the top prison chief, known as Duch, said.
He said that he hadn't believed it was happening until he was shown the images and realised it was true.
"They were killed at [the Choeung Ek killing fields] and at S-21; it was done by my subordinates.... I am criminally responsible because it was under my supervision," he told judges.
Answering questions put to him by the prosecution about the regime's policies at Tuol Sleng, Duch said it was necessary for children who accompanied their parents to the prison also to be killed so as to prevent them from taking "revenge" on regime leaders in the future.
"My superior [former Minister of Defense] Son Sen said to me that there is no gain in keeping them, as they might take revenge on you," Duch said from the dock.
"You have to remember the class stance," he added.
Though acknowledging the "smashing" of babies against trees, Duch denied that they were thrown from the top floors of the prison's building.
"We have found documentation to suggest that babies were also brutally killed in Pursat province," Youk Chhang, the director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, said Monday.
"The only explanation that we can give was that the soldiers were children, too," he added.
Youk Chhang, whose centre began conducting research into the matter in 2004, said that there were few accounts of baby killings, as all other members of the family were usually slain as well, and there was "no one left to tell the story".
He said he was aware of one only woman who was thrown from the prison's top floors, but that babies were also thrown in the air and caught with bayonets, according to the centre's investigation.
Responding to questions from the deputy co-prosecutor, Tan Senarong, Duch said he did not know whether every child was photographed before being killed.
"I saw some of them being photographed, but the majority of them were not," he said.
"My main role was not to release anyone, so whether the prisoners were photographed or not, this was not my main concern."
Duch ‘rewriting' his story
Though Duch has repeatedly accepted responsibility for the actions of his subordinates, he still maintains that it was his unwavering dedication to the communist line that led him to such crimes.
"Duch has been able to rewrite his story and create an image of forgiveness. We need to understand the brutality," Youk Chhang said.
"We need to know what kind of orders made someone do this? Was he joyful to be fulfilling the orders of Angkar?" he added.
Duch apologised at his trial in late March, saying he accepted blame for the extermination of thousands of people at the prison, which served as the centre of the 1975-79 regime's security apparatus.
But he has denied prosecutors' claims that he played a central role in the Khmer Rouge and maintains he only tortured two people himself and never personally executed anyone.
He is charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity, murder and torture, and faces life in prison if convicted by the court. ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY AFP
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PetroVietnam Seeks Oil Investment in Cambodia
This is a move that Yuon communist attempting to put pipe lines for stealing free gas from Cambodian people, be side stealing many other natural resources.
A Vietnamese petroleum company is seeking an investment opportunity in Cambodia's oil exploration, said a senior government official on Tuesday.
Pen Ngoeun, advisor to the Cambodian government said that Dinh La Thang, chairman of PetroVietnam, on Tuesday met with Sok An, deputy prime minister and minister of the Council of Ministers, expressing his company's interest in investing in oil exploration in Cambodia.
He said Sok An, in response, welcomed the move, but suggested more study and discussions be made with Cambodian National Petroleum Authority before making into any agreement.
Many international petroleum companies, including the U.S. Chevron Corp, Polytec, Medco, Kuwait Energy and CNOOC, expressed their interests in putting investments in the sector after this country had revealed to the public of its available national resources in oil and gas in its offshore in the Gulf of Thailand.
Ho Vichet, vice chairman of the Cambodian National Petroleum Authority said last year that Cambodia's expectation of its first oil development before 2010 was unlikely due to the slow submission of a development plan by the U.S. giant Chevron Corp.
He said Cambodia permitted Chevron to exploit the country's offshore Block A, one of several blocks, to do more exploration and appraisal.
According to Vichet, Chevron operates the block A with a 55 percent interest, while Mitsui Oil Exploration holds a 30 percent and South Korea's GS Caltex a 15 percent stake.
Cambodia has earlier estimated its oil production would reach 400-600 million barrels, but have later turned down their estimates saying it was too early to speculate the outcome before a business gets started.
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Vietnam and Cambodia combat drug crime together
Deputy Prime Minister Truong Vinh Trong assured Cambodia of stronger links to combat drug-related crimes during a meeting with the country’s senior narcotics squad in HCM City on June 9.
Trong told Ke Kim Yan, Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and President of the National Committee for Drug Control, that the two countries should enhance their channels of information as well as provide each other with regular assistance in drug control, drug detox facilities, rehabilitation and in the management of former drug addicts.
“ Vietnam has recorded some achievements in the fight, including successful models of detoxification centres and community-based and voluntary detoxification, vocational training and job placements for former drug users,” said Trong.
In response, the Cambodian Deputy PM sounded satisfied with the assistance Vietnam was providing in the fight against drug lords. He said Cambodia was looking for more information and help from Vietnam to train up its drug squads and open drug detoxification centres as well as joint initiatives in the fight against cross-border drug crime.
The same day, Yan, who is leading the senior delegation from the Cambodian Committee for Drug Control met with senior Police officials from the Ministry of Public Security.
Major General Lam Minh Chien, Deputy General Director of the Police Department, briefed his guest on drug crimes in Vietnam, focusing on drug dealers and traffickers from overseas and the country’s experience of breaking and tracking down drug gangs.
He also shared Vietnam ’s experiences in raising the public’s awareness of the dangers of growing addictive plants and drug education in schools.
The Cambodian guests are scheduled to visit several detoxification centres in HCM City and leave Vietnam on June 12.
Vietnam to host high-level meeting on drug control
Vietnam will host a meeting of senior officials to discuss a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on drug control amongst countries in the Mekong Delta sub-region in 2010.
Deputy Prime Minister Truong Vinh Trong on June 8 asked the Ministry of Public Security to work with the relevant ministries and departments, which are members of the National Committee for AIDS, Drug and Prostitution Prevention and Control, MOU member countries and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to prepare for the event.
Initiated by the UNODC, a cooperation framework among Greater Mekong sub-region countries was formed in 1993 with its first members including China , Myanmar , Thailand and Laos , to deal with the complex problem of drug production and use in the region.
Since joining the MOU in 1995, Vietnam has become an active member of the organisation. Thanks to joint co-operation mechanisms, Vietnam has also worked with other member countries to address common problems such as destroying poppy fields and developing other crops whilst cracking down on drug cartels.
Vietnam supports efforts to sustain peace in Sierra Leone
Viet Nam continues to support the efforts of Sierra Leone to sustain peace and stability, address the root causes of the conflict, promote national reconciliation and unity, and strengthen its international integration process.
At the June 8 meeting of the UN Security Council on “the situation in Sierra Leone, Ambassador Le Luong Minh, Permanent representative of Vietnam at the UNSC also called upon the UN, the Peacebuilding Commission, the AU, ECOWAS and the international community at large to continue to assist the Government of Sierra Leone in these endeavours.
The diplomat welcomed the signing of the April 2 Joint Communiqué in which the parties in Sierra Leone committed to a cessation of all acts of political intolerance and violence and agreed upon a bipartisan consensus on important national institutions and policies.
“We take positive note of the strengthened cooperation between Sierra Leone and the UN Country Team, the Peacebuilding Commission and other development partners to strengthen areas of focus and principles of national ownership, mutual accountability and sustained engagement as contained in the UN’s Peacebuilding Strategy for Sierra Leone and the Joint Vision of the UN Family for Sierra Leone,” he said.
While commending the efforts by the UN Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone (UNIPSIL) in carrying out its new mandate stipulated in Security Council resolution 1829 (2008), the Vietnamese ambassador said well-coordinated and integrated cooperation among UN agencies, regional organisations and international donors remains essential so as to ensure maximal use of resources, avoid duplication of work and help serve the best interests of Sierra Leone in each particular phase of development.
Gov’t religious affairs delegation visits Cambodia
The Chairman of the Government Committee for Religious Affairs, Nguyen The Doanh, is leading a senior-level delegation to Cambodia from June 8-12.
During a meeting with Minister of Cambodia’s Cults and Religious Affairs Min Khin, both parties informed each other of their positions on religion and shared experience in implementing religious policies in their respective countries.
They agreed that increased religious cooperation between the two countries will contribute to enhancing Vietnam and Cambodia ’s traditional relationship.
Minister Min Khin thanked the Vietnamese government and its people for their support and sacrifices during the fight against the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia .
He also spoke highly of the cooperation shown by the committee in helping Cambodia implement its religious policy to win the hearts of the people in every walk of life for peace and socio-economic development.
During his stay in Cambodia , Chairman Doanh and his delegation were received by Senate President Chea Sim, Chairman of the National Assembly Heng Samrin and Prime Minister Hun Sen.
The delegation will also visit Battambang and Siem Reap provinces to study their religious activities.
President honours banking sector for wartime achievements
State President Nguyen Minh Triet has awarded two arms of the State Bank of Vietnam with the title “People’s Armed Forces Heroes” for their contributions during the past wars of resistance against American imperialists.
The awards ceremony was held for the Special Financial Service under the Central Committee for South Vietnam and the Special Fund in Hanoi on June 9.
The Special Fund (B29) was a special payment unit responsible for mobilizing sources of foreign currencies to support southern Vietnam and working out different ways of providing financial assistance to battlefields in the south before submitting them for approval by the Party’s Central Committee.
B29 also held responsibility for ensuring the supply of foreign currencies to the frontlines in any circumstances, protecting and converting its foreign reserves into different currencies in a way to avoid losses due to currency devaluation and resorting to every means to gain a higher interest to increase the State’s foreign reserves.
The Special Financial Service (N2638) was entrusted with receiving budget allocations and changing the money into other currencies such as those circulated under the Saigon regime and Cambodian Riels to fund underground organisations. N2638 also served as the Central Committee for South Vietnam ’s coffers in service of the prolonged war of resistance.
The two units operated for 10 years from 1965 to 1975 and made an enormous contribution to the final victory.
In his speech, State President Triet called on the banking sector to uphold patriotic traditions from the past to serve the country’s current national development.
On the occasion, the State Bank of Vietnam posthumously presented the Independence Order and the Labour Order to its former leaders for their long-term contributions to the system’s founding and development.
National ethnic minorities congress to open in 2010
A national congress of Vietnamese ethnic minorities will be held in the middle of May next year.
According to a plan approved by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on June 8, the congress aims to review ethnic affairs and affirm the Party and State’s consistent policy on ethnic and great national unity issues.
The event will honour the ethnic minorities’ great contributions to defending and building the country through different periods.
In preparation for the national congress, districts and provinces nationwide are to hold their congresses in the third and fourth quarters this year.
A steering committee will be set up with a Deputy Prime Minister acting as its head.
VietNamNet/VNA
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Woman's long-haul trip to find dentist
By Andrew Ffrench »
PHOTOGRAPHER Alice Taylor got her fillings done in Cambodia after struggling to find an NHS dentist in Oxfordshire.
Ms Taylor, from Jericho, Oxford, travelled to Phnom Penh for her mother Anne’s 60th birthday party in April.
The 29-year-old decided to get her teeth done at the same time to save money, after a private dentist in Oxford quoted her £80 for a single filling.
Ms Taylor thought she needed two fillings but ended up with 10, leaving her with a total bill of $200 – about £125.
She estimated that she had made a saving of £675 on the possible £800 bill she could have faced from a dentist in the UK.
Ms Taylor said: “I think it’s a fabulous saving and it almost covered the cost of my return flight, which cost me about £700.
“I was going to Cambodia anyway for my mother’s birthday, so I thought I would get the dental treatment done at the same time.
“I visited two private dentists in Oxford last year and I wasn’t particularly happy with the treatment I received.
“I went to one dentist to have a crown put back in after it fell out, and the dentist put it back in after warning me it could fall out again.
“It did fall out two hours later, so I went to another dentist and had the tooth extracted, because that was the cheapest option.
“At the time, I rang round a few places looking for an NHS dentist but I couldn’t find one.
“It seems a bit random to go so far to get dental treatment, but if you’re travelling in south-east Asia, it’s good to know there are dentists who can treat you for a reasonable price.
“I’m a bit sceptical about dentists in England, so I’m no longer looking to sign up with an NHS dentist.”
Ms Taylor, who works at the jewellery store Nothing, in Oxford’s Covered Market, added: “My dog ate my last pair of glasses and I know opticians in the UK can be expensive, so I got some new glasses in Cambodia as well.”
She decided to get her fillings done in Cambodia after root canal treatment there cost her only $50 four years ago.
She added that four of the 10 white fillings were large fillings, while the other six were small, and did not require local anaesthetic.
affrench@oxfordmail.co.uk
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Monday, June 08, 2009
Attacks on Jarvis multiply
Written by Robbie Corey-Boulet
ECCC's head of Victims' Unit under fire from defence teams.
The letter, addressed to the court's Deputy Director of Administration Knut Rosandhaug, also calls for an administrative inquiry into allegations that Jarvis's expressed political views could compromise her work at the court. In addition, it points to a book Jarvis co-authored in 2004 that the defence team said "strongly implies that Dr Jarvis has preconceptions about the alleged crimes", namely that they constituted genocide.
The bulk of the letter, though, concerns the conflict that will allegedly arise when Jarvis, who became head of the Victims' Unit last Monday, combines the responsibilities of that role with her outreach work.
"We are firmly of the view that amalgamating outreach activities of the entire court together with the interests of the Victims' Unit creates an inescapable conflict of interest for Dr Jarvis through no fault of her own," the letter states.
In an interview Sunday, co-lawyer Ang Udom said the switch from court spokespwoman to Victims' Unit chief amounted to a switch from an objective administrator to active party, making it impossible for her to impartially perform outreach duties.
"Jarvis used to work just with the administration," Ang Udom said. "But when she becomes chief of the Victims' Unit ... she becomes very active in the court process. She is a party in the court."
Andrew Ianuzzi, a legal consultant for Nuon Chea's defence team, said he "absolutely" agreed with the position articulated by Ang Udom and Michael Karnavas, Ieng Sary's international co-lawyer.
"The trouble is, I think that the court has done a pretty bad job of explaining what her outreach roles will encompass," Ianuzzi said.
Court spokesman Reach Sambath said Sunday that court officials had, before making the appointment, concluded that they could avoid a conflict by limiting Jarvis's involvement in outreach to what he termed "micro-outreach".
"We divided this very clearly, because public affairs will continue to focus on macro-outreach," he said. "And the Victims' Unit will minimise their outreach to micro-outreach. That means all the important work related to outreach activities will still be in the Public Affairs Section, and the Victims' Unit will focus on outreach for the victims."
But the May 18 press release announcing the appointment states: "Dr Helen Jarvis will continue to have oversight of [outreach] work."
Ianuzzi said the distinction between "macro-outreach" and "micro-outreach" was not made at the time of the announcement, adding that he had never heard of it before.
He said he had no problem with Jarvis performing outreach duties that were restricted to her role as head of the Victims' Unit.
Jarvis declined to comment Sunday, saying she had not seen the June 4 letter.
The defence teams for former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan and former social minister Ieng Thirith have yet to weigh in on the
appointment. Sa Sovan, Khieu Samphan's co-lawyer, and Phat Pov Seang, Ieng Thirith's co-lawyer, both declined to comment Sunday.
Past writings
Concerns about Jarvis's political views were raised last week by Nuon Chea's defence team, which singled out a 2006 open letter signed by members of the Democratic Socialist Perspective's Leninist Party Faction, including Jarvis.
The letter states: "Against the bourgeoisie and their state agencies we don't respect their laws and their fake moral principles."
Karnavas said via email: "If she has made those comments and if she is an unrepentant Marxist-Leninist with views that are antithetical to the founding laws and principles of the Cambodian Judicial System, then, at a minimum, the inevitable perception that will arise whenever she is called upon to make an important or difficult decision is that she is promoting her revolutionary agenda."
Ianuzzi said the idea of an administrative inquiry was "probably not a bad idea".
Reach Sambath declined to say whether an administrative inquiry was underway.
The June 4 letter also singles out a book Jarvis co-authored in 2004 with the British journalist Tom Fawthrop titled Getting Away with Genocide: Cambodia's Long Struggle Against the Khmer Rouge.
The Ieng Sary defence team argues in the letter that the use of the word "genocide" calls into question Jarvis's "absolute impartiality", a requirement for spokespersons, which the letter argues has been established at other tribunals.
Karnavas said the book indicates that Jarvis "holds some strong opinions which ... call into question her objectivity".
Ianuzzi, who said he had not read the book, seconded that charge, saying, "Certainly it sounds like she has made up her mind about the fact of a genocide."
Youth No Defense Against Death: Duch
Not even a child at his mother’s side was safe from the Khmer Rouge killing machine, the regime’s chief torturer told tribunal judges Monday.
Kaing Kek Iev, better known as Duch, said his communist superiors, pushing class struggle, “recommended…I must be strong.” “And then I accepted, yielded to the principles of the party, that I must destroy children,” Duch told the UN-backed court.
The former chief of Tuol Sleng prison, the regime’s main torture center, Duch, 66, is facing charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and murder.
“There is noting to gain by keeping them,” Duch said of children, “and they might take revenge on you.”
When babies and children arrived in Tuol Sleng prison, he killed them because a principle of the party was this fear of retaliation, he said, adding that he believed his subordinates killed child victims by swing them against tree trunks.
“I am criminally responsible for the murders of babies, young children and teenagers,” he said.
Duch stressed on Monday that if one of the four groups of leadership inside Democratic Kampuchea accused someone as the enemy, security guards would have to arrest the accused. When the accused were sent to S-21, they had to be interrogated and then smashed, he explained.
“If you dared to sneak the release [of the accused], you would have had guilt,” he said.
Read more!
Contrary Cambodia
Cambodia is a country of contradictions, and tourists can find themselves marvelling at the ancient beauty of the temples of Angkor one day before being horrified by a memorial containing thousands of human skulls at the Khmer Rouge killing fields, on another.
The calm of the countryside is in stark contrast to the intense activity of the capital city Phnom Penh where the lively nightlife hides the country’s flourishing prostitution trade.
Bewildering? Yes. Boring? No. As first-time visitors to this increasingly popular South-East Asian tourist location, we started our journey in Siem Reap, a city which bases its livelihood on its proximity to the glorious temples of Angkor. Our limited time meant we had only two days to explore the 12th century temples, which stretch over a deceptively large area of which the famous Angkor Wat is only one part.
Starting our journey at the walled kingdom of Angkor Thom, our first stop was the Bayon, the King’s state temple. Our childish sense of adventure was delighted by its hidden passages, steep stairways and endless ornate doorways. Next was Ta Prohm, a temple so overgrown by giant tree roots it captures the prehistoric imagination of all who visit, including the Hollywood producers who filmed Lara Croft: Tomb Raider here.
The constant presence of beggars following us was a reminder of the crushing poverty of this country in which four-year-olds ask you to take their photo then demand money; and victims of landmines, less forceful but no less visible, play music outside temples in the hope westerners will donate. It was in that context we arrived at Angkor Wat, the national symbol of Cambodia and the creation of King Suryavarman II. While impressed by its splendour and size, I could not help feeling the glories of the past could not compensate for the problems of the present.
Our second day was filled with temples further afield and shopping at the Psar Chaa markets in the city centre. The markets are a haven of jewellery, silks and wooden ornaments that would never be allowed through Australian customs.
The next day was a six-hour boat ride south down the Tonle Sap river to Phnom Penh. We were unprepared for the circus that greeted us as our boat docked in the capital city. Tuk tuk drivers grabbed our bags without warning and tried to herd us towards their vehicles, promising cheap rooms if we followed. Refusing all offers of assistance did not make us any friends but it enabled us time to breathe and find our own accommodation in the riverfront area of Phnom Penh. Dumping our bags on the top floor of a guesthouse with no lifts, we set out to explore the city.
The Tuol Sleng torture museum was known as the S-21 prison during the reign of the genocidal Pol Pot. A former high school, the museum now houses graphic photos of torture victims, found when it was liberated in 1979, and a series of mug shots of the sad faces of each prisoner who passed through its barbed-wire gates. A 15-minute tuk tuk ride out of the city then took us to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, where most of the 17,000 detainees held at S-21 were executed. A glass tower containing 8000 human skulls and their clothes is overwhelming in itself. But walking through the killing fields, treading on human bones and clothing poking through the ground after years of erosion, was more disturbing.
The story of the Cambodian genocide is unavoidable in Phnom Penh. The city was emptied by Khmer Rouge soldiers in 1975, remaining uninhabited until the Vietnamese invaded in 1979. The Khmer Rouge killed an estimated 1.7 million of their fellow countrymen through execution, starvation and disease. The impact was devastating but no one has ever been held to account for the tragedy. The former Khmer Rouge prison chief Duch is currently on trial for war crimes, while the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is a former Khmer Rouge commander.
The recovery of the country has been slow, with poverty endemic in most areas. We came face to face with an extreme example of this deprivation with a visit to the Stung Meanchey rubbish dump on the outskirts of the city. Here, hundreds of people live in nauseating squalor, making a measly living from collecting recyclable rubbish.
Our guide was David Fletcher, an English expatriate who runs a not-for-profit organisation that does food runs to the dump two or three times a week with the help of donations from young travellers. He also owns a local bar, mostly patronised by older Western men and young Cambodian women. After seeing our donations go directly into buying fresh food from the markets, we then helped out at the dump by attempting to keep order in the queues while bread rolls and fresh fruit were distributed. The scene was chaotic but our momentary contribution worthwhile.
A visit to neighbouring Laos was also on our itinerary and it couldn’t have been a more different experience. With a short history as a nation-state and a far less violent past, Laos, once a French colony, is known as a place to relax on the often chaotic South-East Asian backpacking route. The capital city Vientiane, has a population of just 300,000. We also visited Pha That Luang, a beautiful temple symbolising the country’s Buddhist influences and its fight for sovereignty.
Our next stop was a town called Vang Vieng, a 3 1 /2-hour bus ride north of Vientiane. Described by Lonely Planet as “soulless”, the whole town seemed to be on permanent school leavers’ week, with restaurants frequented by hung-over tourists playing Friends and Family Guy on a loop.
The main attraction of the town was the infamous tube ride down the Nam Song River. People have apparently died on the trip so it was with trepidation we hired our tyre tubes and jumped on a tuk tuk that drove us to the river bank. There we were greeted by pumping music, bars along the river serving $US3 ($3.60) buckets of cocktails, flying foxes and water slides. The recommended two-hour trip down the river took us six hours and, needless to say, was memorable.
A more cultural experience was awaiting us at our next stopover. Luang Prabang, a hairy eighthour bus trip north of Vang Vieng, is the former royal capital of Laos. A nature lover’s paradise, it is Unesco World Heritage-listed and attracts many eco-tourists.
Our adventures in this beautiful town and its surrounds included a visit to the stunning Tat Kuang Si waterfall and a kayaking trip to the Pak Ou Caves which contain thousands of Buddha images.
The future of this mainly undeveloped country rests heavily on its rapidly increasing share of the tourist trade. But its emphasis on eco-tourism will hopefully prevent the destruction of its largely untouched wilderness and unique national spirit.
PHILIPPA PERRY
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Global corruption survey: Ukraine has highest level of corruption among Newly Independent States
International civil rights organization Transparency International has launched a new Global Barometer, where Ukraine placed the last among the New Independent States with an index of 4.3 index.
In the report, which was made public in Brussels, the following corruption indexes are provided: Armenia – 3.1, Azerbaijan – 3.3, Belarus - 3.4, Georgia – 3.1, Moldova – 3.5, Mongolia – 3.7, Russia – 3.9 and Ukraine – 4.3.
Among the European Union and other countries the corruption index was calculated for Austria (2.8), Bulgaria (4), Czechia (3.4), Denmark (2.4), Finland (2.5), Greece (3.7), Hungary (3.8), Iceland (3.5), Israel (3.5), Italy (3.7), Luxemburg (3.3), The Netherlands (2.6), Norway (3.1), Poland (3.5), Portugal (3.4), Romania (4), Spain (3.2), Switzerland (2.8), The United Kingdom (3.3), the United States (3.7) and Canada (3.2).
The survey, which was held from October 2008 to February 2009 in 69 countries, polled 73,132 respondents.
Most of the respondents were greatly concerned by the growth of corruption in the private sector, which increased by 8% if compared to results of 2003. Many respondents think that bribery is used to influence politics and the regulatory sector for the benefit of companies. This opinion is widespread in the newly independent states, the Americas, the West Balkans and Turkey.
Most of those polled said that they consider political parties as the most corrupt domestic institution.
More than one out of every 10 respondents had to pay bribes last in the last 12 months. Four out of ten bribe-givers said the bribe was 10% of their annual income.
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Cameroon, Iraq, Liberia, Sierra-Leone and Uganda top list of countries affected by low-level bribery. The results show that people with low income pay bribes more frequently than the rich ones when they deal with the police, law, land sector and education.
On the whole, the results show that the state anti-corruption measures are ineffective.
When asked what sector they consider the most corrupt, most people said it was politics (29%). The rest named state officials (26%), parliament (16%), business and private sector (14%), legal institutions (9%) and the mass media (6%).
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Saturday, June 06, 2009
Drug makers eye Cambodia
How many more truck loads of fake drugs will Cambodia going to get from Vietcong? it has been years of Yuon policy to ship fake drugs to Cambodia.
VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese pharmaceutical products are yet to gain a reputation in Cambodia and domestic companies have to employ specific strategies to tap the significant potential that the neighbouring nation’s market presents, several exporters say.
A firm presence in the Cambodian market would open the door for Vietnamese drugs to other markets in the region, they said at a trade investment and promotion conference held in the Mekong Delta province of An Giang last month.
Several domestic drug companies have exported their products to Cambodia, including the Hau Giang Pharmaceutical Joint-Stock Company, the Domesco Medical Import Export Joint - Stock Corp, the Pharbaco Central Pharmaceutical Joint- Stock Company and the FD Pharma Import and Export Company.
According to Nguyen Van Dinh, director of Cambodia-based FD Pharma Import and Export Company, Cambodia is a huge and potential pharmaceutical market for Vietnamese exporters because it largely depends on imports from France, United States, South Korea, India, Thailand and Viet Nam.
However, Cambodian consumers do not pay much attention to Vietnamese pharmaceutical products because they do not match local habits and tastes.
Besides, the pharmaceutical industry in Viet Nam is not very well developed. Domestic producers have to import over 90 per cent of raw materials and this affects production costs and reduces the competitiveness of Vietnamese products in the market.
Quality is the most important concern on the minds of consumers and Cambodian importers feel Vietnamese medicine making factories need to invest in technology and modern equipment to improve product quality.
Many medicine makers were yet to obtain the ASEAN standard certificates for Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), the conference heard.
Many drug exporters said that the Government needed to lower export duties on pharmaceutical products to raise their competitiveness.
Marketing experts said pharmaceutical exports would need high quality packaging with eye-catching designs in order to attract consumers.
Vietnamese pharmaceutical products exported to the Cambodian market are mainly antibiotics, tonics and other specific remedies.
The FD Pharma Company said its distribution system operated throughout Cambodia and had an import turnover of Viet Nam-sourced medicine that exceeds US$1 million per year.
This could go up to $1.5 million this year and $2-3 million in the next few years, it said.
Cambodia is a country attracting increasing numbers of foreign visitors from all over the world for holiday or business, and can become a bridge for popularising the image of Vietnamese pharmaceutical products in other foreign markets, especially in ASEAN nations, according to experts attending the conference.
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Globalization's ugly side: sex slavery
By John Boudreau
Mercury News
RACH GIA CITY, Vietnam — The offer came to families on the edge of desperation, living and working around the clock on garbage dumps whose sickening stench seeps into their clothes.
A motherly woman accompanied by a kindly gentleman arrived one day in early December, shortly before the New Year's Tet celebration when the poorest of the poor hope for a little extra cash for modest festivities. The two said they were looking for attractive young women to work in a Ho Chi Minh City cafe, and they were ready to give each family a $60 advance — a small fortune for people barely scraping by on a couple of dollars a day — or less.
Though at least two fathers objected, they were overruled by their wives and daughters, who were willing to take any risk to help their struggling clans. After examining each girl like livestock, the man chose five of the prettiest teenagers, and picked two more from a neighboring area. The teens quickly packed a few belongings and left.
Seventeen-year-old Truong Thi Nhi Linh was one of those chosen. It was, she says, the best chance to help her family — a chance to make considerably more money than she earns working 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. in the dump, sloshing around on rainy nights in knee-high sludge among swarms of other workers looking for bits of junk.
She reassured her parents, who opposed her leaving. "I said, 'It's OK. I'm just going to work.' " She added, "I want to help my family."
Hours later, one of the few parents with a cell phone received a panicked call from their daughter — they were not headed north to Ho Chi Minh City but to Cambodia, where the girls would be forced into the sex trade.
Young and vulnerable
It is a misfortune that falls on many young women in Southeast Asia with the twin vulnerabilities of being pretty and poor. Like their parents, they often are illiterate and profoundly uninformed about the dangers of international sex trafficking and how strangers drug or lure unsuspecting teens into a life of satisfying the cravings of foreign men. Their innocence is prized: Some Asian men are willing to pay as much as $600 to have sex with a virgin because they believe it will restore their youth, give them good fortune or even cure them of AIDS.
Vietnam, with an abundance of beautiful young women living in desperate straits, is a magnet for human brokers — some of whom pay families to marry off their daughters to men in Korea, Taiwan and China; others are linked directly to human trafficking. Parents often ignore the dangers to their daughters in pursuit of a better life.
"The families are so poor," said Quach Thi Phan, chairwoman of the Women's Union of Rach Gia City in Kien Giang Province, which organizes anti-trafficking educational campaigns. "They just think about how to get money, how to find a job."
In the case of the Rach Gia teens, the police conducted a last-minute raid near the Cambodian border to rescue them after receiving calls from a community member and, eventually, at least one worried parent. The almost routine incident received no local news coverage, underscoring the virtual daily threat to the world's underclass.
"It's globalization in its ugliest form," said Diep Vuong, president of Pacific Links Foundation, a Milpitas-based nonprofit started by Vietnamese-Americans. The organization works to prevent human trafficking by providing educational opportunities to at-risk Vietnamese girls and those who escape the sex trade.
"If you don't know how to read the public announcements or have enough money for newspapers and you barely have enough to eat, how can you understand there are risks?" she said. "It's so easy to look the other way. I meet many young women who say, 'I know it's risky, but I must try because we are so poor.' I tell them, 'Do you think you'll be able to sleep with 15 guys a day?' They are mostly terrified and surprised; 'What are you talking about?' they ask."
Fighting back
A half-million young women are trafficked each year around the world, according to the U.S. State Department. In Vietnam, the government recently reported that last year there were 6,684 victims of trafficking, with 2,579 returned to their homes. It also said there were 21,038 people reported missing who could have been sold into prostitution. Experts, though, question the accuracy of the report and fear the numbers are higher.
Vietnamese authorities in recent years have moved aggressively to stop sex trafficking. Police in the home province of the seven teens, for instance, have officers dedicated to cracking down on traffickers. Overall, though, neither the national nor local governments have enough resources to adequately fight the problem, experts say.
In 2004, NBC's "Dateline" news show broadcast a report about Cambodia's sex trade. To the horror of the Vietnamese-American community, the young prostitutes spoke Vietnamese. As a result of the broadcast, a number of Vietnamese in the Bay Area and elsewhere began creating programs to prevent such sexual exploitation, said Benjamin Lee, chairman of San Jose-based Aid to Children Without Parents.
They set up organizations to provide opportunities and hope for those at the bottom of the economic ladder and assistance to those who escape forced prostitution.
But they face a culture that makes their task difficult; in some cases, parents willingly sell their daughters to traffickers for thousands of dollars. "In the Eastern way of thinking, the children have to obey their parents: 'I have my body. I will do this for my family,' " said Nguyen Kim Thien, director of Ho Chi Minh City's Little Rose Warm Shelter for sexually abused girls.
This modern-day slavery takes root in regions isolated by abject poverty and close to Cambodia's thriving sex trade, such as parts of the Mekong Delta. One such place is on the outskirts of the bustling port city of Rach Gia in a majority ethnic Khmer community.
Day-to-day misery
Though Vietnam boasts a literacy rate of more than 90 percent, many of the residents in this community have little or no education. They spend their days and nights picking through heaps of garbage for recyclable materials, such as plastic and metal. Children, barefoot and barely clothed, play amid the foul-smelling waste.
"This is a community in which we had to teach them how to use soap, how to use a bathroom — the basics of the basics," said Caroline Nguyen Ticarro-Parker, co-founder and executive director of the U.S.-based Catalyst Foundation, which has set up a school in the area and is working with Habitat for Humanity to construct homes for people in the community.
"Their day-to-day life is, 'How do I get food on the table today? Who is going to take care of my child today?' " she said. "Life has been so hard for them. They can't think of the future."
They live in huts with thatch roofs on or near a garbage dump swarming with flies and mosquitoes. On a recent morning, 23-year-old Kim Thi Mau sorted dirty plastic bags. Last year, her 4-year-old son Lam drowned when he fell in a ditch filled with water while she and her husband worked nearby. She has two other sons, 20 months and 4 months.
"I hope there is a school that can take care of my children — some place not like this, dirty," said Kim who, like her 28-year-old husband, is illiterate.
So it can be difficult to resist strangers who arrive in a village promising good-paying jobs. Many of these families survive on $1 or $2 a day. In the case of the seven teens, the traffickers said they could pay each one about $120 a month working in a city cafe.
Taken from home
On that December morning, a unwitting family in Rach Gia's Vinh Quang ward sent out word about the employment offer. More than a dozen girls and their families gathered at a house.
"The man looked at our faces and said, 'This girl is OK. This one is OK,' " said Danh Thi Anh, a shy and soft-spoken 20-year-old, who was one of those picked and 19 at the time.
The selection process began at 11 a.m. By 1 p.m., the teens were on the road. Soon after they left, a Catalyst employee who tried to dissuade the teens from going told one member of the community to call the police.
Most of the young women had never been far from home by themselves. Within a few hours, one figured out they were not heading to Ho Chi Minh City, Truong and two other teens recalled.
The girls, using a cell phone one of them had, began calling home, and eventually one of their mothers called the police.
Some of the teens began to cry. They had arrived in An Bien City, south of Rach Gia, and were to travel to the coast and board a fishing boat to Cambodia.
"We were very afraid," Truong said. "We did not know where we were."
But police, who had tracked other human traffickers taking the same route, found them at 10 p.m. They arrested the woman who was escorting them. The man got away.
About 4 a.m. the next day, the teens were back in Rach Gia.
It is unclear what the community learned from the narrow escape. Catalyst Foundation representatives held community meetings afterward. "We said, 'This is what will happen: Your child will be raped, and not by one person, but by many people,' " said the organization's co-founder Nguyen. But she can't be sure it won't happen again.
For those living in brutal conditions, Nguyen said, "It is a lot of money."
Seventeen-year-old Truong, who lives in a cramped thatched home elevated over water with nine family members, said she has not given much consideration to what would have happened to her had she ended up in Cambodia.
"I don't think about that," she said passively. "If it had happened, it would have been because it was my destiny. That's the life."
HOW TO HELP
Bay Area-supported groups working to prevent human trafficking among Vietnam"s poor:
Aid to Children Without Parents
Has provided assistance to refugee and other poor children since 1988. In recent years, the organization has been focusing on preventing young people from being drawn into the sex trade. It has funded the renovation of schools and completed a community center; created a culinary school in the central Vietnam city of Hue to give at-risk young women skills; and built schools in Cambodia for poor Vietnamese communities in that country.
U.S. address: 134 Martinvale Lane, San Jose, CA 95119. Phone: 408-225-0405; 408-225-8302. Vietnam address: 14 Nguyen Cong Tru, Hue. Web site: www.acwp.org
The Asia Foundation
Sponsors discussions between Vietnam and its neighbors, Cambodia and China, on preventing human trafficking. Also works with partners to create a number of programs to provide economic opportunities for poor women, access to credit and vocational training. Works with National Legal Aid Agency to offer victims of trafficking legal services.
U.S. address: 465 California St., 9th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94104. Phone: 415-982-4640. Vietnam address: 10-03 Prime Centre, 53 Quang Trung St., Hanoi. Phone: 84 43 9433263. Web site: asiafoundation.org
Catalyst Foundation
Provides an array of educational programs, from vocational training to a primary school, to poor residents of the South Vietnam city of Rach Gia. It also works to raise awareness about the dangers of sex traffickers. The nonprofit assists the poor in Dong Thap Province along the Cambodian border with scholarships and life-skills training. U.S. address: 710 St. Olaf Ave., Suite 100, Northfield, MN 55057. Phone: 507-664-9558. Vietnam address: 231/10 Bui Thi Xuan St, Ward 1, Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Phone: 84 83 8476293. Web site: www.catalystfoundation.org
Pacific Links Foundation (An giang/Dong thap Alliance for the Prevention of Trafficking ADAPT)
It works in partnership with two other Bay Area-based nonprofits, Oakland-based East Meets West Foundation and International Children Assistance Network in San Jose. The alliance provides an array of programs "” from scholarships to vocational training to job placement to grass-roots advocacy "” along the Vietnamese-Cambodian border to prevent young women from becoming entangled in human trafficking. It operates a re-integration shelter for women who have been victims of human trafficking.
U.S. address: 534 Valley Way, Milpitas, CA 95035. Phone: 510-435-3035. Vietnam address: 163/A9 Huynh Thuc Khang, TP Long Xuyen, An Giang. Phone: 84 76 3853888. Web site: pacificlinks.org
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Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie
By George Clooney
It is one thing to talk about the problems of the world and quite another to actually try to change things.
As a team, actors Brad Pitt, 44, and Angelina Jolie, 32, have served as our goodwill ambassadors worldwide. They brought help to Pakistan in 2005, after a catastrophic earthquake killed tens of thousands of people and left millions homeless. They have tended to the poor and sick in Africa. And they've raised global awareness—and contributed $1 million of their own money—for the victims of atrocities in Darfur. Brad co-founded Not on Our Watch, an organization set up to focus global attention on Darfur and other hot spots.
In the U.S., Brad and Angelina didn't just talk about, or even just throw money at, the tragic fallout from Hurricane Katrina. They actually moved to New Orleans and have set about trying to make right what so many have made wrong. Brad established a project to finance and build 150 new homes in the Ninth Ward.
Angelina has worked tirelessly through the United Nations on behalf of refugees around the world, touring border camps in Africa, Asia and Latin America and lobbying on Capitol Hill. The couple cares for three adopted children, from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Vietnam, in addition to their biological daughter.
There are hundreds of people who could be honored for their good works, but I've seen Brad and Angelina firsthand, and their commitment together is truly impressive.
Clooney is actively engaged in trying to resolve the Darfur crisis
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